


Two Dead Boys

by Irishgrlnextdoor



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Identity Issues, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Mistaken Identity, Sort Of, Violence, alludes to torture -on joker, warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:48:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24396028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irishgrlnextdoor/pseuds/Irishgrlnextdoor
Summary: We know Jason died. We know he returned to find out Batman hadn't killed Joker. We know how this affected him and the family.What no one knew, however, was that TWO worlds lost Jason Todd that fateful night. Two worlds had Jason Todd return from death.Just not to their original ones.The Jason we knew as Robin returned to a world where Batman kills, and the Joker is dead. /villainous batfam
Comments: 11
Kudos: 57





	Two Dead Boys

** Two Dead Boys **

poem by: Chalsey Wilder

_One bright day in the middle of the night,_

_Two dead boys got up to fight._

_Back to back they faced each other,_

_Drew their swords and shot each other._

* * *

Jason hurried along the dock, trying to keep out of sight as best he could. He had tried to get here quickly, but he had gotten crucial information from one of his informants unfortunately late in the game. As he rounded a shipping container he could already hear gunfire further ahead. It could only mean that the Batman had already made his move upon the Falcone gang. There was gunfire coming from more than just one location and Jason could gather well enough that the others were with Bruce in this bust.

Jason nearly tripped when he came upon the prone body of one of the first lookouts that had been taken out. The man could have been slumped down on the ground sleeping for all appearances, but there was a dark thin line that encircled his neck and it was clear that he was doing no such thing, mouth still open as if trying to take in air for lungs that no longer worked.

Jason’s stomach turned. And he reached for the emergency pager he had wired to ping and emergency alert along with his GPS location to the Gotham police. They wouldn’t get here soon enough, he hadn’t either, but Jason hoped they might show up soon enough to drive the bats out from this fight.

He drew his guns from their holsters at his hips. And pressed on past the first body towards the commotion still going on that signaled he was not so late that there was nothing to be done about Falcone’s men.

Flashes of light in the darkness told him how close he was to the shooting, and he hunkered down behind some shipping crates to adjust his helmet’s night and targeting vision and check his ammo. All rubber bullets, enough to hurt like hell, but nonlethal. Jason pulled a smoke screen bomb from his jacket too and tossed it over the crates, waiting a moment as it hissed and a dense fog quickly filled the dock.

He could hear a confused jumble of men swearing, broken by the occasional scream or the sound of a heavy hit landed on its target.

Jason vaulted over the crates and kept low as he steadied his aim. Some of Falcone’s men were taking advantage of the cover he had gifted them, making a run for it back up the dock,

Jason could see in the fog some bodies that wouldn’t get the chance, a batarang sticking out of the chest of the one nearest him. Jason grimaced as he caught his first glance of the bat in the haze, a flash of black cape through the smoke, and then another mobster’s gun going off in panic, and then a choked scream.

Jason abandoned position, moving forward into the smoke. Another mobster was running blind close by, and Jason grabbed the man to keep him from running right for Batman by mistake. The man swung on Jason in his confusion and fear. Jason expertly blocked the hit, and then delivered a sharp but non-debilitating kick to the man’s back to further encourage him along back towards land where hopefully he would be intercepted by the police. It was the best the man could hope for to be found by the police before another of the bat’s protégées happened upon him. The cops would at least ensure the man’s life and deliver justice according to the law. It might be less effective than Bruce’s methods in the long term, but Jason wasn’t going to let his family massacre them all if he could help it.

More mobsters were abandoning their positions, trying to make a run for their lives. Jason caught the attention of one petrified looking man, waving him up the dock, “That way, go, move now!”

It took the man a second to seem to comprehend the sense of Jason’s words, another for his foot to step in that direction, and then one more for a hard black club to come out of the darkness and crack against the back of the man’s skull so hard that even Jason could hear the sound of the bone fragmenting, and the man dropped before even realizing he had been hit, unmoving as Nightwing stepped over him. That grin on Grayson’s face was downright manic as it fixed upon Jason, and his skin crawled, wanting to run away himself. Not so much from the man who still considered them family, but from the PTSD that that smile combined with the bludgeoning of the man between them had brought on. Dick managed to sound genuinely excited and surprised to see him. “Little wing! Come to join in the fun?”

“You call this fun?” Jason growled, temper flaring.

Dick’s eyes narrowed in warning behind the domino mask. “I call it justice.”

“It’s murder! There’s no justice in it!”

Dick rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue petulantly. “Not this again.”

His complete dismissal of Jason’s views on killing only caused his blood to boil all the more, and Jason moved to confront the man, but there was a shrill sound in the distance that pulled their attention. Police sirens.

Dick’s lip curled and accusing eyes turned back to Jason. Even though he couldn’t see it through the helmet, Jason glared back, stance firm. “B., company coming in,” Dick grumbled, speaking for the comm in his domino.

Whatever the reply was went unheard to Jason, but they didn’t have to wait long at all for the batman himself to seem to materialize out of the clearing smoke.

The more the wind coming off the bay cleared the area, the more bodies exposed in his wake. Jason’s jaw clenched at the sight of them all, easily over a dozen men.

The white lenses of Bruce’s mask were directed right at him, and there was a mutual tension in his jaw. “We would have called the cops ourselves.”

“After you were finished with this massacre,” Jason tacked on for him, his anger finding a new target as he shook with rage.

There was a growl of warning in Bruce’s own response, extra fearsome when he was using his batman-tone. “These men are murderers, Jason, I know you’re already aware of that much at least. Not to mention the numerous other crimes. Crimes both small and large they have plagued this city with. The hundreds of victims they create each and every year- he cut himself off as the sirens drew closer, pressing upon them the need to go. Bruce spoke into his com, confirming for Jason that there were at least one of two others still on the docks tonight. “Cops coming in, retreat back to the Batcave now. Does everyone copy?”

There was a pause while affirmations were given, and Jason started to take the chance to make his own exit, but Bruce held up a hand to stop him, and years of training brought him to heel so effectively even after all this time that Jason cursed himself for his compliance. “Jason, you too. We obviously need to have another discussion about your methods.”

Because of course he was the problem. His way of handling the criminals of Gotham was unacceptable for the Batman and the code he lived by to stop the worst of them by any means necessary in order to protect the innocent.

Jason growled deep in his throat, enough that some of it made it through the voice modulator in his helmet. “Fuck you, old man. I don’t need any more of your shit tonight. I’ve stomached enough of it,” he insisted with a gesture towards the bodies littering the docks. A handful had made it out, some directly because of his interference, but even one or two lost were too many. That had been pounded into him deep down until it rang true. Or at least, he thought it had been. He could sometimes swear…

But everything since the Lazarus pit was a mangled mess inside his mind, and there were so many impressions that he couldn’t always tell his memories apart from fantasy, and as close to reality as he could recall, his memories didn’t seem to quite align with it. None of this was anything he was about to share with anyone. Bruce accused him of pit-madness often enough as it was without knowing the true extent.

He growled now in response to Jason’s defiance, and it was far more intimidating than even one of Jason’s best attempts to immolate it. “Compared to the piles of bodies each of these men have left in their wake… not even considering those they didn’t outright kill, but inflicted suffering upon in some way or another-

Dick cut in between them, some of his own frustration reaching the surface, “I hate to break up these moments of family togetherness, but we really do need to get going.” Those bright eyes turned to Jason and he saw just a little of that coldness leave them. He remembered they used to be so warm. He thought so anyway, and he felt weakened when he caught glimpses of them looking that way again. “Jason, just come back to regroup and get yourself patched up. Let Alfred see you.”

It was a low blow, one that rarely failed to work on him. Jason was aware, but found himself tightly nodding his head once in agreement even before he could catch himself. He took some of his family for sadists, but he supposed he was a masochist in that same right.

X

There was no end to the limits of how deeply someone could be certain of things, just to find out they were dead wrong. Not just in the small ways, like finding out you were wrong that you had locked your door despite being sure that you had, but in the ways that really should have been undoubtable. Jason had surely been dead. It was a fact. It was certain. That had to mean he couldn't be alive now, and yet here he was.

Or in his memories. He had been certain of his memories of the batman, of Bruce, and of his family. They had been pulled together by trauma and loss, yes, that was certain. They had been bonded over desire for both family-ties and justice against those that had wronged them or others they loved. yes, certainly. They believed in a justice that upheld the laws and were certain of a mercy that was far-reaching within their mentor. A mercy that had been hammered deep into their own hearts as well… no.

That last part was wrong, not at all as he remembered, or thought he remembered anyway. His memories failed him at this junction. It had started when Jason had been with Talia, when she had tried to break through his catatonic psyche by delivering him the news that the Joker was officially dead, murdered by the batman’s own hand.

Jason could swear, however, that he recalled discussions Bruce had had with him about killing, when Jason started growing into a new strength, and was flexing it upon criminals in ways that Bruce had determined as ‘cruel’ and ‘unacceptable’. Jason had shrugged it off at first, because after all, they were just criminals, so they had coming whatever they got, right? How could Bruce really care?

But then Bruce had sat him down shortly before Jason's death came about, and now the words he had been certain Bruce had said to him now seemed like a hazed fever-dream.

Bruce had admonished him after they had heard about the sentence of one of the men they had put away together as Barman and Robin. The thug was to be extradited out of Gotham to receive a death penalty in another state where he had an even longer and more gruesome criminal history.

Jason had been flippant, and commented that Bruce should have just saved everyone the trouble by letting the man bleed out in the field after he had managed to land on the very knife he had tried to stab Batman with.

"Jason," Bruce had admonished, no less than disappointment crossing his face. 

Jason had been more than familiar with that lecturing tone, and had turned around to face it head on, his arms crossed in conviction of his prior statement.

Bruce had continued undeterred by his muled stance. “Jason, that’s not justice. That’s just murder. There’s enough of it in this city without adding onto that misery. No matter who the criminals may be, they are a life, and a soul, and usually have at least someone that would mourn and suffer over such injustice brought upon them. How can you want me to bring that suffering onto those they would leave behind? Besides, what would that mean for you or Dick if I were to take lives into my own hands? Would you be able to give me your full trust when you know I’m capable of that kind of evil? What example would I make for you? Or for the people of Gotham? How could I live with myself if I set a precedent that you or Dick could ever do something like that in the future?”

Jason shrugged, flippant, “I’m just saying when they deserve it-

“They don’t, Jason,” had been the flat cut off, Bruce’s tone harsh enough to make him flinch in surprise before he was suddenly kneeling in front of him, hands firm yet gentle on Jason’s small shoulders. “Murder is not something anyone deserves, son. Ever, and even if it were, I could never live with you or any of my protégées taking such a task upon your selves. I gave you the mantle of Robin so you could find and maintain justice, but I will never allow you to do so at the cost of your soul, Jason. Never at that cost, do you hear me? A man loses something important and irreplaceable once he loses that piece of himself. Remember that, son. It’s the most important lesson I can give to you.”

Jason shook his head, trying to clear it from the confusing memory. It couldn’t be real, but he had thought it was, and when Talia had told him that the joker was dead, something about that had broken through Jason’s haze enough to allow tears to slip from his eyes.

Jason had eventually learned, however, that that hadn’t been the end to the batman’s killing. Contrary to the best of his memories, it hadn’t even been the start, not by a long shot. He wasn’t alone either, Dick and even Jason’s replacement trained up to lethal proficiency, as Jason discovered after Talia put him through the Lazarus pits and released him out into the world. Jason had been further confused and horrified to find old articles in his research that he had been just the same, that there were dozens of murders attached to robin during his own time in the role, and he recalled none of them beyond what the stories told him. He didn’t even recall any training for such matters.

He had to question just how messed up the pit had made him.

Jason looked down at his hand now, pretending he was inspecting his nails out of complete disinterest for Bruce’s dark mood as he crossed the Batcave towards him once more after Alfred patched up a shallow knife wound he had received on the docks. Jason pretended he wasn’t checking for blood, because sometimes he felt like he just needed to see that there wasn’t any on his hands, unable to recall ever seeing any there despite the reports he had read about himself off the batcomputer leading up to his death.

Bruce’s growl was rolling thunder announcing a storm as he loomed over Jason. “Do you want to tell me why you aided the escape of no less than six known killers tonight?”

It was hardly an escape, those same mobsters being snatched up by police, but he knew what Bruce meant. Which was exactly why he felt the need to play dumb with a little cheek.

“I don’t really think I did much to help, but last I counted there were only four of you on those docks tonight, old man.”

Bruce wasn’t amused in the slightest. “What do you think you were doing, Jason? Explain to me right now why you sought to enable the eventual slaughter of untold numbers of innocent lives by delivering those men into the safe-haven of Gotham’s revolving door of criminal justice.” The word ‘justice’ was said like a bad slur upon Bruce’s tongue whenever it was used in connection to the justice of the courts.

Jason could at least understand that animosity to a point, woefully bureaucratic and corrupt as the department was. Still, he raised his chin and met that glare head-on, ignoring the stares of his equally frustrated brothers as they watched from around the cave.

As plainly as he could see the faults of the courts of Gotham, he stood firm on the morals he had been taught- as far as his messed-up mind remembered him being anyway. “We’re not justice, Bruce. You killed those men all in cold blood like you were their judge, jury, and executioner. As if underneath all that black pretense you’re not just a man, as capable of flaw as the rest of them. You’re the mass-murderer here- but you lie and tell yourself and us that you’re righteous in it and-

“ENOUGH!” The bellow boomed across Jason’s face as if it really were the voice of God condemning him. He didn’t wilt back, but even he wasn’t certain if it was out of bravery or stupidity. Either way, he did fall still in trepidation of that voice, of that anger turned upon him. They all did. Even Alfred paused in his stitching of Tim’s injuries.

Bruce’s tone didn’t soften one bit even as his volume lowered back down to a viperous hiss. “You can pretend all you want that you’re out to do something more noble than us now, that your crusade since your return has a higher purpose, but do not assume to ensnare me in the self-righteous façade you’ve given yourself, not when we know who you once were, who you could be again…

Just some of the hard edge fell off of Bruce’s voice, “You were Robin. You were the boy terror, wearing the mantel passed down from Dick and shaping it into your own legacy. The vengeance you dealt in the pursuit of justice for Gotham’s most destitute sons and daughters was…” He seemed at a loss for words, and Jason wished it ended there, but it didn’t. “And you didn’t just avenge those that were senselessly murdered either as I had been doing. By the time Dick infiltrated Bludhaven’s PD and started turning the screws on those corrupted by the gangs, you had yourself nearly cut out the cancer that had infected Gotham’s lost children of The Narrows- targeting any dealers pushing to the more vulnerable women and children of that area. It was you that first convinced me of the merits of directing crime rather than furthering my idealistic pursuit of a Gotham free of it. You were the one to convince us of its necessity of those unable to sustain themselves by any other means- be it from poor education, social biases, or pure circumstance. You did all that by the time you were 15 years old. You, Jason.”

Bruce delivered it like praise, as close as he got to it anyway. Jason couldn’t see it that way anymore, couldn’t understand how he ever had. Hearing it all now, Jason just hung his head, already aware of all this. He had studied all the reports Bruce had ever kept of him during his time as Robin. Thing was, for all the news reports, all the evidence logged… he didn’t remember any of those things.

A lot of other thing in the reports he did remember though. He remembered the countless reports made of cases solved with Bruce that hadn’t resulted in killing. He remembered the reports of those people they had genuinely helped, kindness he had given to strangers as Robin. Those had been in the reports too. The training reports were more the same. He remembered so many of them perfectly, but not all of them, not the training put into the various efficient ways to kill someone. Lethal weapons training with Bruce…

His memories played differently. He almost swore he instead had patchy recollections of disarming and subduing- never anything to cause substantial injury.

The report of his first kill… he didn’t remember that at all, but could read it in detail in the reports Bruce had kept. And he _had_ read it, over and over again. He had read it until he almost thought he could remember it, almost turning into the truth for himself.

Roger Krell. A pedophile, and hitman for local gangs, Jason had apparently crushed his windpipe with a lethal aerial spin-kick. The report mentioned he had made a quip and asked Bruce if they could go for chilidogs after they were done dispatching some of the other gangsters he had been out with as well. According to the report, Bruce had gotten him chilidogs and they had gone to get a bats-eye view of a night-game at the ballpark to celebrate. It had been a celebration of all the lives that would have suffered in Roger’s wake had he been allowed to go on now being free of that trauma.

Jason was so bogged down in the mire of his own mind around these unrecalled memories that it caught him completely off guard when Bruce’s hands gripped his shoulders. It was also a familiar touch, one that had been warm to him before he had died. It was still warm, despite their now differing stances, and Jason had to fight himself not to melt into it as he longed to do deep down. Bruce had dropped back the cowl at some point before grabbing Jason’s shoulders. That start blue stare held enough complexities about the strain between them that Jason listened well when he next spoke. “You were… you were my partner, Jason. Part of my- part of my team,” he hedged, even less comfortable now than he had been then at expressing emotions. “Losing you was-

He seemed to lose some of his nerve there, unable to expand upon that pain. “Well, suffice it to say, you’re not… lost… anymore, but we’re still waiting for that day you come back to us.”

That hurt. It burned Jason deep down because he felt the same way. He didn’t know why he had come back, he didn’t know why he didn’t remember his life right, and he didn’t know how to rejoin his family. He didn’t fit with them anymore, now with their willingness to kill. He couldn’t bring himself to go along with their beliefs anymore, however. He wanted to believe in redemption. In forgiveness. There was neither of those things in death. There was just death.

He wouldn’t kill, and being around his family as they continued to form their own label of justice that allowed for that just made him resentful of them.

Whatever expression was souring his face called Dick forth from the sidelines. He stepped up to do what he did best- mitigate between Bruce and everyone else to cover what an asshole the man could really be, using his charms to soften whatever blows had otherwise just been rained down. Jason saw through that bullshit long ago, his glare turning to the older man instead. “Jason, you know Bruce only comes down on you because what we do really does matter. It really does save people. We try to cut off the suffering the populace would otherwise incur before it can ever reach them. To stop those that would be given chance after chance to hurt others just because they can. People like… like the Joker.”

It was dangerous water for the man to tread into, and he spared a hesitant glance back towards a very tense Bruce before turning back to Jason. “You of all people should be joining us in that fight. Can you really look us in the eye and tell us we were wrong to put him down? To exact that justice that you claim is so flawed to make sure he couldn’t do to anyone else what he had done to you?”

Jason's vision tunneled for a moment, and he felt cold. Joker… those memories he had intact. What he remembered of his own death and what had been in the reports were the same. What had come after…

Joker hadn’t just been killed. Joker had been tortured, made an example of, and his eventual demise made into a horror story great enough to make the most hardened villains of Gotham shiver whenever the tale was whispered about like a ghost story. His death had been more of a mercy than a murder by the time it had finally been enacted. Jason had had to take in those reports during a couple of different sittings, barely coping with the trauma induced just by reading the horrors bestowed upon the one that had dare to kill Batman’s second son. Bruce had recorded much of it, not just written, some in video, some in voice recordings. Dick had even had his own chance at the Joker, taking a pound of flesh for himself… a little too literally. Jason sometimes wondered if Dick still kept the hand he had crudely severed somewhere around his apartment. The extents of their darkness, even on his own behalf, had been truly fear-inducing, and Jason sometimes still suffered nightmares, knowing the monsters his own brother and father could house inside themselves.

“You’re just wasting your breath on him, Grayson,” the demon brat scoffed from across the room, snapping Jason’s unfocused attention over once more. Those green eyes looked back at him from over the katana he was cleaning blood off of, unimpressed. “Todd’s a lost cause, even he knows it. He’s obviously still pit-mad.”

Jason whirled upon the boy then, mouth dry with fear even as his eyes blazed with angry denial. “I am not!” he bellowed, instantly regretful of how defensive he had just made himself sound.

The demon brat seemed to think the same, his lip curling up in a pious sneer.

“Enough.”

Again, that one word from Bruce brought everything to a halt, despite being only weary this time.

Jason recovered quicker this time. He jerked back from both Bruce and Dick’s proximity, redonning his helmet with a shake of his head. “You know what, screw you all.”

“Jason,” Dick implored, frustration spreading across his face.

“Jason,” came the clipped command from Bruce, which Jason had to fight through to keep his legs moving to his bike.

Something deep down within called out to him too, pleading to stay, to once more be with them, no matter what. it was a childish fancy, and he pushed it down and told it to shut up. He was no longer a child, and he no longer belonged here.

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think this the multi-verse where Jason eventually joins the church to become Father Todd after multiple attempts to reconcile with his family, to try to readdapt to their ways, only for it to fail each time as he rejects their views of killing.


End file.
